Nov 2025 Contract Delivery Progress for UK Project Gigabit Broadband Rollout | ISPreview UK

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The Government’s Building Digital UK agency has today published their November 2025 update on the delivery progress of contracts that have been awarded under their £5bn Project Gigabit broadband rollout scheme, which among other things reveals that some 167,770 contracted premises (up from 150.7k in Oct 2025) have been covered out of a planned total of 1,002,210.

Just to be clear. The figures in this update are not directly comparable to the figures published in BDUK’s general statistics releases. Today’s report tracks the number of contracted premises to which the supplier has delivered a subsidised gigabit-capable connection, whereas the official statistics report on the number of premises that have received a gigabit-capable connection as a result of any public BDUK subsidy (i.e. that covers other schemes too, like vouchers etc.).

NOTE: Project Gigabit is technology neutral, although full fibre (FTTP) is preferred.

At present over 88% of UK premises can already access a gigabit-capable network (here) and Ofcom separately forecasts that this could reach between 91-97% by January 2028 (here). Most of this has been delivered by commercial deployments (predominantly focused on urban and semi-urban areas), but there are some areas in the final 10-20% of premises that are simply too expensive for commercial providers to tackle.

Project Gigabit was originally established in 2021 to help extend broadband ISP networks capable of delivering download speeds of at least 1000Mbps (1Gbps) to achieve “nationwide” coverage (c.99%) by 2030 2032 (here) – focusing on the commercially unviable areas (usually rural and semi-rural locations). The project has already committed most of its budget up to 2030, but there are still some contracts yet to be awarded and others that have been scaled-back or switched suppliers (here, here, here and here).

At this point it’s worth remembering that all of the listed contracts below were awarded at different times. For example, Openreach’s cross-regional (Type C) deployments are some of the most recent ones – awarded between 2024 and 2025, while the contracts for North Dorset (Wessex Internet), Teesdale (GoFire) and a few others are the oldest and awarded all the way back in 2022. In short, they’re all at different stages of development.

Project Gigabit – Contracted Premises and Built Premises by Contract (Nov 2025)

Contract Supplier Contracted premises Built contracted premises
Bedfordshire, Northamptonshire and Milton Keynes CityFibre 21,030 1,580
Bucks, Herts and East of Berks CityFibre 19,090 2,510
CO1 Lancashire, West Berkshire, Staffordshire, Surrey, Hertfordshire, Wiltshire and Gloucestershire Openreach 54,340 6,530
CO2 Devon, Mid Wales and South East Wales Openreach 42,270 4,560
CO3 North Herefordshire, North Wales, Shropshire and South West Wales Openreach 52,060 50
CO4 South Devon, Mid Devon and North Somerset Openreach 37,110 150
CO5 Essex and North East England Openreach 24,710 300
CO6 Rest of Scotland Openreach 65,070 290
CO7 Worcestershire Openreach 22,600 0
Cambridgeshire CityFibre 39,070 6,830
Central Cornwall Wildanet 9,720 6,720
Cornwall and Isle of Scilly Wildanet 14,540 2,090
Cumbria Fibrus 53,540 24,270
Derbyshire Connect Fibre 12,500 330
Dorset and South Somerset Wessex Internet 7,240 1,470
Durham GoFibre 4,460 4,440
East Gloucestershire Gigaclear 3,550 450
East and West Sussex CityFibre 41,940 1,280
Hampshire CityFibre 55,570 4,690
Kent CityFibre 46,080 1,410
Leicestershire and Warwickshire CityFibre 38,230 5,350
Lincolnshire and East Riding Quickline Communications 47,800 10,610
New Forest Wessex Internet 15,120 7,740
Norfolk CityFibre 48,890 9,640
North Dorset Wessex Internet 6,710 6,490
North East Staffordshire Connect Fibre 5,960 1,080
North Oxfordshire Gigaclear 4,180 2,910
North Shropshire Freedom Fibre 3,410 3,410
Northern North Yorkshire Quickline Communications 33,810 4,230
Northumberland GoFibre 3,830 3,830
Nottinghamshire and West Lincolnshire CityFibre 27,820 0
South Oxfordshire Gigaclear 5,310 1,610
South West Cornwall Wildanet 11,120 6,300
South Wiltshire Wessex Internet 18,240 3,610
South Yorkshire Quickline Communications 13,290 6,660
Suffolk CityFibre 65,710 13,210
West and Parts of North Yorkshire Quickline Communications 26,310 11,150
TOTAL   1,002,210 167,770

We should point out that CityFibre’s progress under the £58.6m (public subsidy) contract for rural parts of Nottinghamshire and West Lincolnshire (Lot 10) needs to be taken in context, since Connexin originally held this until only a few months ago when they were acquired by CityFibre. Connexin only began the build phase at the end of last year (here), thus its delivery has been stuck in limbo due to that consolidation.

The above is an example of why it’s important to understand the context behind each contract before judging its delivery progress, since a face-value assessment will overlook various realities. Speaking of which, some of the contracted figures may differ from the original announcements, which reflects the usual contract modifications (i.e. the scope of delivery can increase or decrease, such as due to commercial networks going further than expected or builds costing more than expected etc.).

In addition, several of the contracts have now complete, such as the ones for North Dorset and Northumberland. For some extra context, you can check out the previous figures for October 2025 (here).

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